Should I give PC away with XP or reinstall Win98?

basmic

beachbeth wrote: »

I was going to say this too!:D

I am giving it away for free! What he does with it when he gets it is his own business! If he doesn't like the pc he can just keep the monitor and throw the rest away!

One point to add - people keep suggesting I add the extra RAM and charge him £20. I've no idea how to do this anyway!!!

From the replies on this thread I think Im going to use cccleaner (I think its called that!!!:o) then clean reinstall xp (I hope Im using the right terms). I will install basic programmes that I think he may need (java, windows media player etc). I also have Boxworld that I'll put on for him (if you haven't had a go at this puzzle its really good!)

If you're going to reinstall, don't use CCleaner - it will achieve sweet Fanny Adams, unless you're doing a repair installation of XP.

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_type=&search_query=install+ram&aq=f

Plenty of guides how to install RAM there.

Astec

Some random replies...gettin far too technical??

Ok, from what I understand...

Your giving PC free. So would you wanna spend extra £20 or £7.98 to make it better? Probably not. Your saving it from the landfill and doing someone a good deed.

You don't seem overly technical. Few options.

1) Pass on as it is. Mention it's slow but with more RAM it'll be much better.

2) If someone close, upgrade and pass on. Charge them for upgrade or don't, depends opn how close they are.

3) You wanna make a few quid for it. Wipe or remove the hard drive alltogether. Sell a random component with the XP licence on ebay, tell the person your giving PC to that it'll need an OS/HD or both. Your still giving a virtually complete PC away for free, but have a few quid. Do look into what the licence is likely to sell for and decide if it's worth the hassle.

4) Strip it for parts and sell on gumtree/ebay. Maybe give unsaleable parts to him.

It does really depend on what you want to do, how much you want a bit of cash against how much you want to give away and how much hassle you'll put up with.

beachbeth

Astec wrote: »

It does really depend on what you want to do, how much you want a bit of cash against how much you want to give away and how much hassle you'll put up with.

I don't want to spend money (the person having it is the father of my daughter's boyfriend and I hardly know him!). I don't want any hassle. I just want rid really. He's doing me a favour taking it off my hands. I could just about be bothered to sell the XP on Ebay thats all. Which is why I was wondering originally if this was worth doing.

I wanted to use a programme to properly clean the hardrive just in case he ends up passing the hardrive on to someone who knows how to get hold of information from it, before reinstalling the operating system.

isofa

Create a disc, floppy etc for DBAN and run it to wipe the hard drive securely.

Then boot with the Win XP floppy or CD, and reinstall from scratch. All done, pass the PC onto the new owner.

You can't get any safer unless you melt the HD down to nothing in a furnace!

-TangleFoot-

Another vote for DBAN here.

beachbeth

Thanks for that. I will use the Dban and reinstall XP. Just got to wait for my new pc to come now!:T